Jaine Austen 4 - Shoes to Die For (8 page)

She plopped down into Grace’s white wicker chair.

“The slogan is going to be
Drop Dead, Gorgeous!
”

I suppose it was better than
Put Some Passion in Your Fashion!
But not much.

“And here’s the brilliant part,” she said. “We’re going to have dead people in all the ads. And in the store window, too. Get it? Dead people? As in ‘Drop
Dead,
Gorgeous’?”

“I get it,” I assured her.

I loathed it, but I got it.

“They won’t be real dead people, of course,” she babbled on. “They’ll be professional models—in coffins, in electric chairs, on operating tables. Beautifully dressed in the latest fashions from Passions. Won’t that be fun?”

Right. About as much fun as a hysterectomy.

She slung her feet up on Grace’s pine desk, crossing her Jimmy Choo knockoffs and admiring her slender ankles. “All I need from you is some body copy. Stuff about me, and how I’ve just taken over the store, and my fabulous sense of style.”

She wasn’t too in love with herself, was she?

“How much was Grace going to pay you?” she asked.

“Five thousand dollars.”

She had a hearty chuckle over that.

“I’ll pay you three hundred,” she said, when she was finished laughing. “And I want the ads on my desk tomorrow morning.”

“So soon?”

“It can’t take you that long to dash off a few ads,” she said. “I’ll meet you here at seven
A.M
.”

“Seven in the morning?”

“I’m a morning person. If you don’t like it, I’ll get someone else.”

No way was I going to work for this bitch.

And I was just about to tell her so when the door flew open. Tyler stood there, his boy-next-door features contorted with rage.

“You bitch!” he screamed, taking the words right out of my mouth. “How could you do this to me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frenchie said, with mock innocence.

“Oh yes, you do. You broke into my apartment and trashed my computer. You burned the floppies in my fireplace.” By now the veins in his neck were standing out like pieces of twine. “You destroyed my novel. Three years of work down the drain.”

“Is that so?” Frenchie smirked.

“I’m filing a police report.”

“Go ahead,” she said. “You can’t prove it was me.” She sipped her wine and smiled a sly, taunting smile. “I told you you shouldn’t have dumped me.”

Then he lost it.

His eyes blazing, he lunged at her, sending her wine glass flying across the room.

“I’ll kill you!” he shouted, his hands around her neck.

Good heavens. He was going to strangle her! Not that I blamed him, but it was still awfully scary.

If Frenchie was frightened, she sure didn’t show it.

“Go ahead,” she challenged him. “You don’t have the guts.”

And she was right. Slowly Tyler took his hands away from her neck, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Now get out of here,” she said. “And by the way, you’re fired.”

He shot her a final look of loathing and headed for the door.

It was then that I started screaming hysterically. No, it wasn’t a delayed reaction to seeing Tyler strangling Frenchie. It was because I looked down and saw that my $3,000 Prada suit was splattered with red wine.

“What’s wrong with you?” Frenchie asked.

“My suit,” I moaned. “It’s ruined.”

“Not only that, your price tag’s showing.”

She was right. In all the excitement, the price tag had loosened from its rubber-band mooring and was now dangling around my wrist.

“So you pulled the old ‘buy it, wear it, and return it’ trick,” she said. “I do it all the time myself.”

The thought of sharing the same moral zip code with someone like Frenchie made me blush with shame.

“I didn’t think the suit was really yours,” she added. “You’re not exactly the Prada type, are you?”

Now I was the one who wanted to strangle her. Needless to say, I restrained myself.

Just then, there was a knock at the open back door. Two burly men stood in the doorway.

“Delivery from Hollywood Props,” one of them said.

Frenchie’s face lit up.

“My coffin. Bring it in, guys.”

They started wheeling in a gleaming mahogany coffin.

“Bring it out front,” Frenchie ordered.

Frenchie and I followed as they wheeled the coffin out onto the sales floor.

“Put it there, in the window,” Frenchie said.

“We’ll put a corpse in the coffin,” she mused aloud, as they hoisted the coffin into the window. “Maybe string one up from a noose. Wow! This’ll be hotter than heroin chic!”

Maxine scuttled to her side like Igor at the Frankensteins’.

“Oh, Frenchie,” she gushed, her eyes shining with admiration, “you’re so creative.”

By now, several shoppers had shown up and were watching with interest as the coffin took center stage in the window. No doubt they’d heard the scene in Grace’s office. And they were about to witness another one. Because just then, Becky walked up to Frenchie, her jaw tight with anger.

“Tyler told me what you did to his novel, and I think it’s just rotten.”

“Like I give a shit what you think,” was Frenchie’s gracious reply.

“Come on, honey,” Becky said to Tyler. “Let’s get out of here.”

She and Tyler started for the door.

“Honey?”
Frenchie said. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you’re his new girlfriend?”

“Yes,” Becky said, raising her chin defiantly. “I am.”

“You left me for this twirp?” Frenchie laughed. “Your loss, Tyler.”

“I don’t think so, Frenchie,” Tyler said. “My loss was ever knowing you.”

That seemed to get to her.

“Get out of here, both of you,” she hissed. “You’re both fired.”

Then she turned to me, pointedly ignoring Becky. “Yes, we’ll have corpses in the window. Maybe even a few scattered around the store.”

But Becky wasn’t about to be ignored.

“Here’s an idea, Frenchie,” she said. “How about one of those corpses is you?”

A hushed silence filled the room as Becky grabbed Tyler by the elbow and stormed out the door. It was so quiet you could practically hear the sound of Frenchie’s blood pressure rising. Flushed with anger, she lashed out at the handiest whipping boy. Namely, me.

“You’d better get started on those ads, Jaine,” she snapped, “if you expect to finish on time.”

“Are you kidding? You can take your job and shove it up your coffin,” were the words I wish I’d been brave enough to utter. But lest you forget, I was now $3,000 in debt, thanks to those wine stains on my Prada suit. I couldn’t afford to turn down any job. Not even from an unmitigated bitch like Frenchie. So what I actually said on my way out was:

“See you tomorrow. Seven
A.M
.”

Chapter 9

H
appy to make my getaway from Frenchie (or, as I was beginning to think of her, Little Hitler), I headed for the parking lot, where I saw Becky and Tyler standing in the shade of a large jacaranda tree.

Tyler, gaunt and drained of color, looked like a mug shot of himself.

“Are you guys okay?” I asked.

What an idiotic question. How could they possibly be okay? They’d both just lost their jobs, and Tyler had lost his novel as well.

“I’ll be fine,” Tyler said, “as soon as I’ve had a martini or three.”

“Oh, Tyler,” Becky said, frowning. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“Yes,” he said, “I think it’s a spectacular idea.”

Frankly, I thought it was a darn good idea myself.

“I don’t want to drink on an empty stomach,” Becky said. “Let’s get something to eat instead. We’ll walk over to Pink’s. Want to come with us, Jaine?”

The last thing me and my thighs needed was to eat at Pink’s. A Los Angeles institution since 1939, Pink’s is the Holy Grail for L.A. hot dog aficionados. People come from miles around for their chili cheese dogs, which have approximately nine zillion calories a pop. No, I really had to start watching myself if I ever expected to fit into a single-digit dress size. So Pink’s was out of the question. Absolutely, positively out of the question.

“Sure,” I said. “Sounds great.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting at one of Pink’s picnic tables, scarfing down chili cheese dogs and fries, grease dribbling down our chins. Correction. Fifteen minutes later,
I
was scarfing down a chili cheese dog and fries. Becky and Tyler, too upset to eat, barely nibbled at theirs. Why couldn’t I be one of those lucky people who lose their appetite when they’re upset?

Becky, the vegetarian, had stymied the guys behind the counter by ordering a chili cheese dog without the dog and without the chili. Basically it was a mountain of melted cheese on a bun.

“Tyler,” she said, taking a bite the size of a bacon bit, “you’ve got to call the police and tell them what Frenchie did to your novel.”

“Waste of time,” he said, shaking his head. “Frenchie’s no dummy. I’m sure she didn’t leave any fingerprints.”

“Then what are you going to do?” I asked.

“Plan A, strangling her, didn’t seem to work,” he said, with a sigh. “I guess Plan B is to get back to the computer and start all over again. But wait,” he laughed bitterly, “I don’t have a computer any more, do I?”

“I’d like to kill that bitch,” Becky said, with uncharacteristic venom.

Tyler absently stirred one of his fries in a pool of ketchup.

“And what about that weird scene with Grace?” he said. “I don’t believe for a minute Grace turned over the store to Frenchie of her own free will.”

“You don’t think Grace was ready to retire?” I asked.

“No way,” Becky said. “Passions is Grace’s life. She’d never step down.”

“And how could Frenchie possibly afford to buy the store?” Tyler said. “She doesn’t have that kind of money.”

“Blackmail,” Becky said, waving her veggie dog. A deliciously greasy glob of cheese fell to her plate. Having already inhaled my dog, I eyed it hungrily. I wondered if anybody’d notice if I scooped it up.

“Frenchie’s got something on Grace,” Becky said. “I’m sure of it. The woman has the ethics of an alley cat.”

“Please,” Tyler said. “That’s an insult to alley cats everywhere.”

“You really think she’d stoop to blackmail?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” Becky said. “She’s already stooped to vandalism. And theft.”

“Theft?”

Becky nodded. “You know that Maltese cross she wears?”

“Yes,” I said, remembering the chunky gold cross I’d seen nestled in Frenchie’s cleavage.

“I’m almost certain she stole it from a customer.”

“Really?”

“One day a customer came into the store and said she left her gold Maltese cross in the dressing room. She’d taken it off while she was trying on a sweater. Frenchie and I looked in the dressing rooms, but we didn’t find anything. At least, I didn’t find anything. Frenchie
said
she didn’t find anything. Then two days later, she comes waltzing into the store and guess what she’s got around her neck? A gold Maltese cross. She said it was a gift from her husband, but I didn’t believe it. Not for a second.”

“Why didn’t you say something to Grace?” I asked.

“I couldn’t. I had no proof. I never saw the customer’s cross, so I had no idea if it looked anything like the one Frenchie was wearing. I kept hoping the customer would come back and catch Frenchie wearing the cross, but she never has. Anyhow, I don’t doubt for a minute that Frenchie would stoop to blackmail.”

“She’s got something on Grace, all right,” Tyler said. “I just wonder what it is.”

“Gosh,” Becky said, looking down at her plate. “I’ve barely touched my lunch. And neither have you, Tyler.”

Then she looked over at my plate. Not a crumb in sight.

“Why don’t you finish my veggie dog, Jaine?” Becky said, holding out her mountain of cheese.

In a rare moment of restraint, I managed to say no.

I finished her fries instead.

“Just look at my suit! It’s ruined!”

I was standing at my bedroom mirror, surveying the damage to my Prada suit. In addition to the wine stains, it now sported a very attractive chili cheese dog grease spot on the elbow of the jacket.

Prozac looked up from where she was napping on my pillow and yawned.

“What am I going to do?” I wailed.

Feed me, of course,
was what she seemed to meow in reply. That’s her favorite answer to life’s difficult questions. That, and
scratch me.

“Are you never
not
hungry?” I asked.

She shot me a look that undoubtedly meant,
Look who’s talking, thunder thighs.

I started for the kitchen to fix her a snack when the phone rang. It was Lance.

“What do you mean—your suit is ruined?”

Due to our paper-thin walls and the fact that Lance has been blessed with Superman-quality hearing, Lance is aware of a lot of what goes on in my apartment.

“What happened?” he asked.

I told him.

“Oh, Jaine, you always exaggerate. I’m sure it’s not that bad. I’ll be right over.”

Seconds later, he was knocking at my door.

“My God,” he said when he saw me. “It’s ruined!”

“I told you,” I pouted.

“Maybe a dry cleaner can get it out.”

I thought briefly of giving it to my old client, Tip Top Cleaners, but I didn’t want to give them the business. I was still ticked off at them for deserting me for that ad agency.

“I’ll take it to my cleaners,” Lance said. “They’re the best. They once got out axle grease from my sheets.”

“How on earth did you get axle grease on your sheets?”

“It’s a long story, involving an old biker boyfriend.”

Compared to Lance, I led the life of a convent nun. Heck, compared to most people, I led the life of a convent nun. But my love life wasn’t the issue; at the moment all I cared about was the $3,000 I owed the friendly folks at Barneys.

Lance waited in the living room while I changed out of the Prada and into a pair of sweats.

“Are you sure you don’t mind taking care of this for me?” I asked, handing him the suit.